I have known men who kept taunting their sons with what they called their imbecility and stupidity until the lads came to believe that they were partial idiots and could not possibly make anything of themselves.

Many of them never did, because they were unable to overcome the conviction of inferiority impressed upon them by their fathers.

I remember one quite pathetic instance of a sensitive boy whose slightest mistake evoked a volley of abuse from his father. He would tell him that he was not "half baked," that he was "an imbecile," "a blockhead," "a blunderer," "a hopeless good-for-nothing." The little fellow so completely lost faith in himself and became so cowed that he hardly dared look people in the face. He could not be induced to enter his home when there were callers or guests present. He would slink away and hide himself in the shed or barn until they had gone. In fact, he became so morbid that he shrank from a.s.sociation even with other boys and the neighbors whom he had known from babyhood. The boy really had a fine mind, and when the death of his father threw him on his own resources, he managed, by sheer will force and dogged persistence, to succeed in making an honorable place in life. But he has never been able to get away from the early conviction of his inferiority, of his lack of ability compared with others around him. All his later life has been handicapped by those pernicious suggestions. Whenever he is asked to a.s.sume any responsibility, to take a place on a committee or a board, to speak in public or make himself prominent in any way, these boyhood mental pictures of his "good-for-nothingness" rise before him like terrifying ghosts and seriously cripple or paralyze his efforts. He has always felt that there is some grave defect in his nature and that, try as he may, he can not entirely overcome his handicap. This crippling, cramping defective image of himself impressed on this man in childhood and youth has robbed him of much of the best of life, of all the joy and exhilaration that come from spontaneity, from the free, unshackled expression of oneself, of all one's faculties.

Children are affected by praise or blame just as animals are. It is easy to kill the spirit of a dog by abuse and ill treatment, so that in a short time he will slink about with his tail between his legs, look guilty and self-depreciatory. In short, he will take on all the appearance of a "whipped cur." Thoroughbred horse trainers say that after a horse has been beaten or abused a few times he loses confidence in himself. His spirit is broken and when he sees the other horses getting neck and neck with him, or perhaps gaining on him a little, he is likely to give up the race. The destruction of self-confidence has caused many a youth with the latent qualities of a thoroughbred to fail in life's great race.

There are thousands and thousands of boys who do not develop quickly.

Their brains are strong and capable, but they work slowly, and as a consequence the boys are misjudged and misunderstood by parents and teachers alike. In other instances the stupidity and dullness for which children are berated are only apparent. They are often the result of timidity, shyness, excessive self-consciousness. The youngsters do not dare to a.s.sert themselves. Especially is this true in families where the parental rule is stern and repressive. The children are afraid to speak aloud or to express themselves in any way.

The suggestion of inferiority deepens this defect till it becomes a mania. Many of the tragedies of the pernicious "ranking system" by examinations in our public schools and colleges are the result of an acute sense of inferiority. Every year quite a number of public school pupils and students in academies and colleges suffer nervous breakdown, become insane or commit suicide because they fail to pa.s.s their examinations. Chagrin and humiliation at the sense of inferiority suggested by their failure unbalances them. In most of those cases lack of confidence, not lack of ability, is the cause of failure.

You may say this is foolishness, but it is true. And if the suggestion of inferiority is powerful enough to drive young people to suicide, certainly the opposite, the suggestion of superiority, would multiply the youth's ability and work a miracle in his career.

A child should never hear the slightest hint to the effect that it is in any way inferior. Its whole training should tend to develop faith, confidence in himself, in his powers, in his great possibilities. As the twig is bent the tree is inclined. The child who is impressed in its tender formative stage with the idea of its inferiority suffers a wrong for which nothing in the after years can compensate.

Many young employees, especially if they are at all sensitive, are irreparably injured by nagging, fault-finding employers, who are constantly reminding them of their shortcomings, scolding them for every trivial mistake, and never giving them a word of praise or encouragement, no matter how creditable their work, or how well they deserve it.

Enthusiasm is the very soul of success and one cannot be enthusiastic about his work, he cannot take continued pride in it, if he is constantly being told that it is no good, that it is in fact disgracefully bad, that he should be ashamed of himself, and that he ought to quit if he can't do better. This fault-finding and continual suggestion of inferiority has ruined many a life.

A young writer, for instance, often gets a serious setback in his early efforts because of a severe criticism, an unqualified condemnation of his first book by a reviewer, or the return of his initial ma.n.u.script, with an editor's sneering suggestion that he has made a mistake in his calling. Harsh critics, editors and book reviewers have deterred many young writers from developing their talent. The fear of further criticism or humiliation, of being called foolish, dull or stupid, has blighted in the bud the career of many talented young people who under encouragement might have done splendid work. If he is of a sensitive nature even though he really have great ability such rebuffs often so dishearten him that he never has the confidence to try again.

In the same way many a possible clergyman or orator has been discouraged by early failure and the humiliation of ridicule. In other words, unless a youth is made of very strong material and has a lot of pluck and indomitable grit, the suggestion of inferiority, perpetual nagging and discouragement may seriously mar his career.

If instead of carping and harping on the little faults and mistakes of those under their jurisdiction, and prophesying their utter failure and ruin, parents, teachers, employers and others in responsible positions would recognize and appreciate laudable qualities, there would be less misery and crime in the world, fewer human failures and wrecks.

The perpetual suggestion of inferiority holds more people back from doing what they are capable of than almost anything else. In the Old World,--China, j.a.pan, India, in England and other European countries, for example,--who can measure the harm it has done in the form of "caste." Think what superb men and women have been held down all their lives, kept in menial positions, because they were reared in the belief that once a servant always a servant; that because their parents were menials they must also be menials!

What splendid brains and fine personalities we see serving in hotels, restaurants and private households in Europe--often much superior to the proprietors themselves. Saturated with the idea that the son must follow in the father's footsteps, though they may be infinitely superior in natural ability to those they serve, these men remain waiters, butlers, coachmen, gardeners or humble employees of some sort. No matter what talents they possess they are held in leash by the ingrained conviction of generations that the accident of birth has decided their position in life. They are convinced that the barriers established by heredity and by caste, an outworn feudal system, are insurmountable.

How delightfully the gentle humorist Barrie satirizes this Old World condition in his play, "The Admirable Crichton." How skillfully he portrays the clever and resourceful butler, Crichton, who in the crucible of a great emergency proves himself a born leader, a man head and shoulders above the n.o.ble lord, his master.

When the yacht carrying the master and his family, Crichton and some other servants, is wrecked, they escape with their lives to a desert island. In their desperate plight the barriers of caste are broken down, and master and man change places. Removed from an artificial environment, where hereditary rank and wealth determine the status of the man, Nature unmistakably a.s.serts herself, and Crichton, by the tacit consent of all, becomes leader. By the force of his inborn ability he controls the situation. He commands, the others obey. Yet when they are rescued by a pa.s.sing ship and brought back to England, old conditions at once resume their sway. Crichton, without a murmur, or thought of change, falls back to his former menial position, and all goes on as before.

While we Americans laugh at, or severely criticize and denounce, the sn.o.bbishness of cla.s.s distinctions in other countries, we are guilty of similar sn.o.bbishness, especially in regard to one section of our fellow-Americans--the Negro race. No matter how highly educated, how able, how refined or charming a man or a woman, if he or she has but a drop of Negro blood, we brand him or her with the stigma of race inferiority.

I always feel sympathy for the colored people, especially for the better educated and more refined men and women of this cla.s.s who must suffer keenly from the discrimination against their race. They see white people avoiding them everywhere; refusing to sit down beside them in public places, in churches, on trains and cars, everywhere they can possibly avoid it. In the South they are not permitted to ride in the same cars with whites, and in other parts of the country, while they may travel on the ordinary day coaches, they are not allowed on the Pullman cars, except as waiters and porters. Our hotels, private schools, public places, and even many of our churches, practice similar discrimination.

The churches pretend to draw no color lines, but by their att.i.tude most of them practically do so.

Everywhere they turn in this land of ours, where we boast that every man is "born free and equal," Negroes are embarra.s.sed, placed at a disadvantage. In all sorts of ways white people are constantly humiliating them, reminding them that they belong to an inferior race, and they take their places according to the valuation of those born to more favorable conditions. This constant suggestion of inferiority has done much to keep the colored race back, because it has added tremendously to their sense of real or fancied inferiority and has been a discouragement to their efforts to make themselves the equals of those who look down upon them.

We can not help being influenced by other people's opinion of us. It makes us, according to its nature, think more or less of ourselves, of our ability. We are similarly affected by our environment. We unconsciously take on the superiority or inferiority of our surroundings. Employees who work in cheap, shoddy stores or factories soon become tagged all over with the marks of inferiority, the cheap John methods employed in the establishments in which they work and spend their days.

If the employees in a store like Tiffany's or Altman's, for example, were to be mixed up with those of some of the cheap, shoddy New York stores, it would not take much discernment to pick out the worker in the superior environment from the one in the inferior. To spend one's best years selling cheap, shoddy merchandise will inevitably leave its mark on those who do so. Even though we may struggle against it, we are unconsciously dyed by the quality of our occupation, the character of the concerns for which we work.

In making your life choice, avoid as you would poison shoddy, fakey concerns which have no standing in their community. Keep away from occupations that have a demoralizing tendency. Every suggestion of inferiority is contagious, and helps to swerve the life from its possibilities.

Every influence in our environment is a suggestion which becomes a part of us. If we live with people who lack ambition, who are slovenly, slipshod, or with people of loose morals, of low flying ideals, we tend to reflect their qualities. If we mingle much with those who use slangy, vulgar, incorrect English, people who are not careful about their manners or their expression, these things will reappear in our own conversation and manners. If we read inferior books, or a.s.sociate with perpetual failures, with people who botch their work and botch their lives our own standards will suffer from the contagion.

It does not matter whether inferiority relates to manner, to work, to conversation, to companions, to thought habits--wherever it occurs, its tendency is to pull down all standards and to cut down the average of achievement. We are all living sensitive plates on which the example, the thoughts and suggestions of others, our own thoughts and habits, our a.s.sociations and surroundings indelibly etch themselves.

I wish I could burn it into the consciousness of every person who wants to make a success of life that he cannot do so while he a.s.sociates himself with inferiority and harbors a low estimate of himself. Get away from both. Have nothing to do with them. If you are a victim of the inferiority suggestion, deny the suggestion, drive it from your mind as the greatest enemy of your welfare.

You can only do what you think you can. If you hold in mind a cheap, discreditable picture of yourself; if you doubt your efficiency you are shackled, you are not free to express yourself. You erect a barrier between yourself and the power that achieves.

The mere mental acknowledgment or feeling that you are weak, inefficient, is contagious. It is sensed by other people and their thought is added to yours in undermining your self-confidence, which is the bulwark of achievement. No matter what others say or think of you, always hold in mind a lofty ideal of yourself, a picture of your own efficiency. Never allow yourself to doubt your ability to do what you undertake. You can not be inferior, because you are made in G.o.d's image.

You can, if you will, make a masterpiece of your life, because it is part of His plan that you should.

CHAPTER IX

HAVE YOU TRIED LOVE'S WAY?

Love, like the sun, never sees the dark side of anything.

You can purchase a man's labor, you've got to cultivate his good will.

Sweeter than the perfume of roses is the possession of a kind, charitable, unselfish nature, a ready disposition to do for others any good turn in one's power.

A New York man who saw a little girl carrying a crippled boy across a street, offered to a.s.sist her, telling her that the boy was too heavy for her to carry. "Oh, no," said the child quickly, "he's not heavy; _he's my brother_."

Oh, marvelous power of love that lightens all heavy burdens and smooths all rough roads! What would become of humanity were it not for love, which sweetens the hardest labor and makes self-sacrifice a joy? It is the greatest force in the universe. Without its transforming power we should still be primitive barbarians.

In spite of the loud cries of pessimists and skeptics to the contrary, its light is still leading men upward. Although the dream of the world's peacemakers has come to naught and Europe is plunged in a merciless war, yet there are mult.i.tudes of signs of the reign of love. Its merciful healing power is at work even on the cruel battlefield. We see it animating the great army of Red Cross surgeons and nurses, who, regardless of creed or country, racial or social differences, are treating all the wounded soldiers as brothers, binding up their wounds and nursing them back to health and life. Love is healing the hurts made by hate and discord.

We see its influence in the miracle which the leaven of the Golden Rule is performing in the business world, in the pa.s.sion for social service in the world at large, in the gradual obliteration of cla.s.s distinctions, in the growing efforts to ameliorate the conditions of the poor, in the great wave of reform that is beating against the walls of all our inst.i.tutions, our jails, our poorhouses, our reformatories, our insane asylums. The abuses with which these places were filled are gradually being cleared up by love.

In many of our prisons, the kindly, brotherhood system of treatment that has been inaugurated is really helping to reform criminals, whereas the old system of penology killed men, broke their spirit, or made them more hardened in crime. It rarely, if ever, reformed. Love's way must in time banish altogether the old cruel prison methods, and ultimately the criminal himself. When the world is run by love, by the Golden Rule plan, crime will die a natural death.

Every one who slips from the right path, no matter what he has done, should be given another chance, a fresh opportunity to make good, to rebuild his character. One who has sinned against society should not be expelled from the sympathies, the good-will and the kindliness of his fellowmen. Criminals should be treated as unfortunate brothers and sisters who have stumbled and lost their way on the life path. Love is the only medium that will help them to rise, to get back into the current that runs G.o.dward.

People who understand them, who see a G.o.d in the ruins that evil influences have made, would make good men and women out of the great majority of our prisoners.

Many of these poor wretches never had an opportunity. They never felt the magic touch of love, never knew the influence of a good home, of honest, loving parents. Most of them did not have a right start in life.

They were handicapped at birth by ignorance, by disease, by vicious parentage. They never had a fair chance. Love's way would give them one.

Shutting them into cramped, miserable, sunless cells, with none of the comforts or conveniences of life, where none of the humanities reach them; meting them out treatment we would not dream of inflicting on our domestic animals, is like trying to put out fire with kerosene oil. Such treatment makes them worse, arouses their basest pa.s.sions of revenge, bitterness and hatred, fills them with a determination to "get even"

with society.

Society is beginning to wake up to the futility of such brutal methods.

It is beginning to apply love's way to its criminal cla.s.ses, to all cla.s.ses.

Our free hospitals, our homes for the aged and poor, our public asylums, are all, like our prisons, working upward toward the light. The fallen, the sick, the poor, the old, the maimed, the bruised and suffering, everywhere are receiving more consideration, more humane treatment, more kindness. And we are finding that greater trust in them, greater sympathy and greater interest in our unfortunate brothers and sisters, are working a marvelous change in human conditions.

In other words, in spite of many seeming contradictions, many glaring evils in our midst, many setbacks and discouragements, the spirit of the Christ, of the Golden Rule, is acting like a healing leaven and performing miracles in the great human ma.s.s.

Love is the great mind opener, the great heart opener and life-enricher, the great developer. It is what holds society together, and if children were trained to love humanity, to love all countries and their inhabitants as they are taught to love their own country and countrymen, there would be no wars. War proceeds largely from what is called patriotism. And patriotism in its narrower sense, which seeks only its own good, its own aggrandizement, at the expense of other countries and peoples, has ever been the curse of the race. When our love is big enough to say, "The world is my country," wars will cease.